HONG KONG, (Reuters) – Just days before China was set to deliver its edict on electoral reform in Hong Kong, Beijing’s most senior official in the city held a rare meeting with several local lawmakers whose determined push for full democracy had incensed Beijing’s Communist leaders.
The setting at the Aug. 19 meeting was calm: A room with plush cream carpets, Chinese ink brush landscape paintings and a vase of purple orchids. The political mood outside, however, was fraught. Democratic protesters were threatening to shut down the global financial hub with an “Occupy Central” sit-in if Beijing refused to allow the city to freely elect its next leader.
After the formal smiles and handshakes with Zhang Xiaoming, the head of China’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong, the mood soured. Pro-democracy lawmaker Leung Yiu-chung asked Zhang whether Beijing would allow any democrat to run for the city’s highest office.
Zhang, 51, dressed in a black suit and a navy blue striped tie, delivered a blunt response. “The fact that you are allowed to stay alive, already shows the country’s inclusiveness,” he answered, according to two people in the room who declined to be named. Zhang’s office did not respond to several faxed requests for comment.
VISIONS OF CHAOS
Zhang’s remarks stripped away any pretence China could find common ground with Hong Kong’s democracy camp. The two sides have been wrangling over what it means to have “one country, two systems” for the past 30 years – China stressing “one country” and democrats in the former British colony the “two systems”.
For Beijing, Western-style democracy conjures up visions of “colour revolutions” and the “Arab Spring”, of chaos and instability that could pose a mortal threat to the ruling Communist Party. For many Hong Kong residents, free elections means preserving the British-instituted rule of law, accountability of leaders, and multi-party politics as a check on government powers.
At the Aug. 19 meeting, Zhang said Beijing had been generous even allowing democrats such as Leung to run for legislative seats. He insisted that the next leader had to be a “patriot”.
“We were shocked,” said one person who attended the meeting. “But Zhang Xiaoming is only an agent who delivered the stance of the central government without trying to polish it.”
Few were surprised, though, when China’s highest lawmaking body, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), announced an electoral package on Aug. 31 that said any candidate for Hong Kong’s chief executive in the 2017 election had to first get majority support from a 1,200-person nominating panel – likely to be stacked with pro-Beijing loyalists.
Democrats say the decision spelled out China’s bottom line on political reform: A direct vote will be allowed, but only if Beijing vets the candidates.
Yet the pro-democracy movement is vowing to press on with its campaign of civil disobedience. It is threatening to lock down Hong Kong’s main business district with sit-ins in October, protesting what they call “fake” Chinese-style democracy. Students plan to boycott university classes later this month. And the city’s 27 pro-democracy lawmakers have threatened to block Beijing’s 2017 electoral package in the legislature, where they hold nearly one-third of the seats – enough to veto the law and block future government policies.
Benny Tai, one of the movement’s three leaders, takes a longer-term view. “I call this a process of democratic baptism … by participating, people will be baptised by democratic ideals,” Tai told Reuters. “So it is not the end of the movement, it’s the beginning of the movement, the beginning of a disobedience age.”
“LEAD CHINA FORWARD”
As a colonial power, Britain appointed Hong Kong’s governors and never encouraged democratic development for almost all of the 156 years it ruled the colony. It was only when Britain and China broadly agreed on how to hand over the colony to China, beginning with a “Joint Declaration” in 1984, that a blueprint for democracy was envisioned. It led to the signing of the “Basic Law” in 1990, which said the city could keep its wide-ranging freedoms and autonomy, and for the first time stated universal suffrage as “the ultimate aim”, while ensuring China still had ample levers to ensure its influence over the city. (See Factbox
Martin Lee, a founder of the city’s main opposition Democratic Party who helped draft the Basic Law, recalls meeting late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on April 16, 1987.
“He said many things. But one of them was if 50 years should prove not enough for you, you can have another 50 years,” Lee said, referring to China’s pledge not to change anything in Hong Kong until 2047.
China’s 1989 crackdown on the protests around Tiananmen Square was a watershed for both sides on how democracy might evolve. After mass demonstrations erupted in Beijing, new democratic groups sprouted up in Hong Kong. China began to see Hong Kong as a potential national security threat.
“When Deng formulated ‘one country, two systems’, I suppose he didn’t anticipate there would be the June 4 massacre which caused Hong Kong people so much anger against the Communists,” Lee said in his law office, which contains a bronze bust of Winston Churchill and a picture of a June 4 candle-light vigil in the city. “He thought he could win us over.”
